What Chloe Did

Chloe, without telling Bea, did something. She planned it over the weekend with the focused energy she usually applied to revision timetables and birthday present lists and other things that benefited from being properly organised.

Bea found out about it on Thursday when she arrived at the library for their third project session and found Chloe sitting at the table with Daniel and two cups of hot chocolate from the canteen vending machine.

"I ran into Daniel," Chloe said, with the breezy innocence of someone who had definitely not run into Daniel at all. "I thought I would keep him company while he waited. Hot chocolate?"

Bea sat down and looked at Chloe with an expression that communicated, across the table, a complete and detailed message that could not be said out loud.

Chloe's expression communicated back: you are welcome and also I will explain later.

"Thanks for getting this," Daniel said to Chloe, wrapping his hands around the cup. He looked at Bea. "Your friend is very nice."

"She is," Bea said. "She is also very meddlesome but that is a separate point."

"I prefer the word proactive," Chloe said.

"Proactive meddler," Bea said.

Daniel laughed. It was a good laugh, easy and unguarded, and Bea felt it like a small warm thing landing somewhere around her ribcage and staying there.

"Right," Chloe said, standing up with her hot chocolate. "I will leave you to the project. I have a thing."

"What thing?" Bea asked.

"A thing," Chloe said meaningfully, and left.

There was a short silence. Bea looked at the textbook. Daniel looked at the textbook.

"She seems like a good friend," Daniel said.

"She is," Bea said. "Even when she is being a proactive meddler."

"Does she meddle a lot?"

"Only when she thinks it will help," Bea said. "She has a very high opinion of her own judgement."

"Is she usually right?" Daniel asked.

Bea thought about the hot chocolate. The table. The fact that she was sitting here with a cup of something warm and three working lunches of normal conversation behind her and the project half finished and no new entries in the list since Tuesday's vertical incident.

"Usually," she admitted.

Daniel smiled. He opened the textbook. "Right," he said. "We have the food and trade sections left. Which do you want?"

"Food," Bea said immediately. "Food is more interesting."

"I knew you would say that," Daniel said, sliding the trade pages toward himself.

Bea looked up. "How did you know that?"

"Because every time Mr. Hassan mentions the food section you sit up slightly," he said, not looking up from the textbook. "I noticed."

Bea sat very still for a moment.

He had noticed things about her. Specific small things. The sitting up. She had not known he was watching. She had been so busy catastrophising about what she was doing that she had not thought about what he might be doing.

She looked at the food section. Her face felt warm. In a good way, not a mortified way. The two felt different and she was glad she knew the difference.

She started reading about medieval bread.